Victory in Europe! On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered, ending WW11 in Europe. I was 10 years old and remember the street parties well. People were dancing and singing, relieved that things could return to the way they were six years ago. No more sleepless nights waiting for the air raid sirens and the rush to the garden shelters or to sleep in the tube station.
Preparations for the 80th anniversary have reminded me of my experiences during the war of being evacuated. We lived in New Cross in South London
In September 1939, after war had been declared, I was 5 years old. I remember being put on a train to Dartmouth in Devon. It was a very long journey, and I had a small bag of clothes and a label with my name and destination on it.
I don’t know why I was on my own and not with my school in New Cross London. In those days, trains had separate compartments, and the train guard would monitor the safety of any unaccompanied children. I was met by the young couple who were to be my guardians. The young man was in the Navy.
I must have been upset by the journey and not knowing where I was going, because that night I wet the bed. This was too much for the childless couple who put me on a return train to London the next day.
My school had been sent away to the countryside without me. I was then sent to a small village in Cambridgeshire with my younger brother. We stood in a line in a village hall. Prospective carers walked past deciding which children they would take. We were among the last to be chosen, probably because people preferred to take only one child. Our ‘takers’ were a childless couple in their sixties, Mr and Mrs Smith; the husband worked for a local farmer.
It soon became clear that they didn’t really want us. Meals were boiled swede from the garden. If we didn’t eat it for lunch, it was served again cold for supper. Mr Smith ate our rations of butter, cheese and bacon. We were given the cheese and bacon rind only. The village school was a mile walk away. One day I collapsed with rheumatism in my legs. I was sent back to London while my brother stayed for another year.
Back to London in time for the blitz.
I remember seeing the docks ablaze from our house at the top of a hill. And soon, houses in our street were destroyed, with bedding and furniture dangling from shattered rooms. Sirens going constantly. I dissociated from the fear. One time, as I was walking up the hill, a German fighter plane swooped over my head; I could see the pilot. Later I learned that his had been one of the planes which had machine- gunned many people in the street market at Peckham. Sleeping in the underground happened often. No schools were open.
Towards the end of the war, I was sent to East Grinstead to bring home my four-year old sister, who had been evacuated shortly after birth. She only knew the East Grinstead family as her parents. So, she resisted and screamed all the way home. I struggled to prevent her opening the train doors.
Some evacuees had very happy experiences and stayed in touch with their carers. My memories are not happy ones, and I was left with a horror of war and the devastation it causes.
Once more, I’ll be hoping and praying that the celebrations do not cause people to forget that wars should never happen again.
